


Lilies

by stharridan



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Community: pokeprompts, Fic Exchange, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:09:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stharridan/pseuds/stharridan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janine, her father's absence and lilies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lilies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skylark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/gifts).



_“This gym is in your hands now, Janine.”_

_She holds out her palms for the keys, but he holds on to them. They are in his fist, clenched between fingers that used to smooth her hair back upon the slightest breeze. That fist is by his side, where Janine thinks it’s not supposed to be. On her shoulder is where it should be, to give her strength; on her head, to give her reassurance; around her hand, to give her guidance._

_But Janine doesn’t say a word. Where children her age would scream and flail and cry, she remains silent, steadfast. She cannot assume the role of his daughter, not now, when his apprentices – soon to be hers – are looking on. Not now, when she believes that her prowess is the sole reason for her appointment as gym leader, just as her father’s renown throughout Kanto has earned him the right to be a member of the Elite Four._

_And only then does he hand her the key. It falls without sound into her palm and she curls her fingers around it, still warm from her father’s touch. She has known that this day would come, but not so soon._

_Father bows once to her and then to the rest, who only straighten up when Janine does, and that is when he is already at the door, in his sandals, duffel bag in hand._

_He doesn’t look back when he leaves._

_The apprentices return to training and Janine remains in the doorway, key now cold in her clammy hands._

\---

Janine never really wanted this, to be a gym leader. It had always been her father whom everyone looked up to, the ninja master who was always, _always_ just one step ahead of the rest.

It was now her responsibility to be one step ahead, but she tried to bring it up to two. She trained, from dawn till dusk, with Golbat and Koffing and Venonat, spreading toxic dust throughout the dojo to the point where she had to lock the door so that no one would enter unprepared. Twilight found her standing in the middle of the private training hall she shared – _used to share_ – with her father, covered by a thin film of sickening violet, hair matted to her forehead and skin slick with sweat, a wild look in her eyes.

The poison she endured each day was more than enough to kill a grown man.

To her, though, it was nothing. Janine was, after all, Koga the Ninja Master’s daughter. 

Nobody was aware of it just yet, however.

\---

_She’s seven and in love with lilies._

_She wakes in the wee hours of the morn just to walk down to the garden in slippers and purple pyjamas. She fills the watering can until it’s just half full so that she doesn’t lose her balance and spill water all over the flowers._

_Father doesn’t like it when the plants are too wet. He doesn’t like it when they don’t get enough water either._

_So Janine makes sure that she waters every single plant before coming to her lily patch. It’s just a small patch, enough for a child like her to care for. She likes to squat down and stare at the lilies, even if most of the time they don’t grow and blossom with those white petals that her father told her about._

_“Father?”_

_“Is this about your lilies again?”_

_“Yes.” She doesn’t question how he knows. She’s used to it. Koga doesn’t spare her a glance as he finishes the rest of his breakfast. “Why aren’t there any flowers?”_

_“They grow sporadically,” he says. He places the chopsticks with a light_ tink _upon its rest beside the now empty rice bowl. “They don’t have a set time as to when they bloom. Perceive it as training, Janine. Waiting for the buds to blossom into flowers teaches you patience, perseverance,” he rises to his feet, “and discipline. Do not waste it.”_

_He leaves her to finish breakfast alone._

_She stares into her bowl, at the grains of rice sticking to its curved wall, at the half-eaten slice of fish, and thinks to herself that she’ll never leave her lilies to go to waste. She’ll water them, care for them, nurture them, and when they’ve blossomed, she’ll show them to him and say, with a big grin on her face, “Look, father! Look at what I’ve done with my lilies.”_

_Because it was her father who left training early to buy seeds and dig a patch for her in the first place._

\---

Crying didn’t come easy to Janine. She couldn’t even remember the last time she did shed a tear, or for what reason, but she knew that she was much, much stronger now than she was way back then. She wasn’t going to cry. Being a gym leader, daughter of a Pokémon Master, she wasn’t _supposed_ to. How would the apprentices perceive her were she to show weakness? What would they say behind her back? Or worse, would they inform her father of her inability to administer the gym?

Janine couldn’t cry. 

Sometimes, however, in the late hours of night, lying in bed with the windows open to a cold breeze, she would feel a tinge of sadness just behind her eyes. The hand that was _supposed_ to fix her hair wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It was miles and miles away, further up north where Pokémon of the like and strength that she had never seen before dwelled in the darkest caves, where the void was but a shadow in the night.

She would rise from her futon and make her way down to the garden, still in purple pyjamas, feet bare to the earth. She’d sit, a lit lantern by her side, and gaze at the lilies. Since the day she watched her father’s back fade away into the distance, Janine could count with just one hand the times she saw the lilies blossom. 

It was useless, she knew. Sitting there each night when she couldn’t sleep wasn’t going to make the lilies bloom before their time. Staring at her father’s portrait in the training hall, aligned with his father before him and the rest of their clan’s leaders, wasn’t going to make him return sooner.

Janine wasn’t even sure whether or not he had plans to come home. He never told her anything beyond his promotion, and she never questioned further.

She tried not to think of what she was to do if he never came back.

\---

_The first time she sees one of her lilies die, Koga discovers her in the corner of her bedroom, eyes rimmed red and nose runny._

_He tells her to wash her face and leaves her to pick up the remains of the lily’s fallen bud alone._

\---

Her hard work paid off, though not in the form where skills as a trainer were concerned.

Sometimes, Janine wondered whether she should be a gardener instead. She’d be a terrible gardener, but at least she remembered to water the plants every morning. 

But that morning was special. 

She woke and, still in pyjamas, slipped on her sandals to do what she had been doing every day since she was able to walk. She didn’t complete her round about the garden, however. She stopped short just before her lily patch. She stopped and she stared at the white petals for a full minute, though to her it seemed so much longer. 

It felt like the morning had passed before she sat down on the earth, still wet from last night’s shower. With a tip of the watering can, the lily bathed, and it was then that Janine realized there was not only one, but two, three, five, seven had blossomed. 

There was a rustle and she turned. _Father!_

But it was only Venonat who came hopping up to her from the underbrush, antennae twitching. It leaped into her arms for a cuddle, and Janine bit back tears as she hugged her companion tightly. 

Seven lilies with petals of the purest white she’d ever seen were in full bloom and there was no one whom she could show them to.

She didn’t allow herself to cry, though. She couldn’t. 

“They’re just lilies anyway,” she said to her flowers, though it wasn’t them who needed convincing. Venonat’s large, large eyes stared up at her and it emitted a little noise that seemed to be of disapproval. Janine let it go, watched as it hopped back towards the house, watched until it stopped at the patio to nuzzle at socked feet-

“‘Just lilies’ now, are they?”

Janine would have fallen back and trampled her lilies had she not the reflexes to control her shock. 

Her father eyed her for a moment, a moment that seemed to stretch on for a lifetime, a moment in which Janine’s heart ached with sorrow and fear and relief just to see him standing there.

“I imagine you’d be happier.” Janine wasn’t sure whether he was talking about the lilies or his homecoming, but either way, what she felt was pretty obvious to her. She stood frozen in time as he dropped his duffel bag and knelt before the lily patch. His fingers fleeted from one flower to the next, caressing each petal just as she sometimes caressed Venonat's fur. 

“Then I’m sure you wouldn’t mind if I were to do this.” He picked a lily, snapped it from its stem in one swift motion. Janine flinched. It was the smallest lily, the smallest and seemingly the youngest; he twirled it between his fingers, as if studying the shape of its petals, its sunburst yellow centre.

Watching him, the words that she wanted to say to him remained in limbo on the tip of her tongue. _Look, Father! Look at what I’ve done._ She could only bite her lip, curl her fingers into fists, and as a cool breeze swept up from the sea, she squeezed her eyes shut. It washed over her; she could taste salt on her lips.

And she could feel the brush of knuckles against her cheek. She opened her eyes just in time to see his hand leave her face, but her hair was now tucked in place behind her ear, and there was something else as well, something foreign, something that felt special but Janine didn’t understand. She raised her hand to touch it.

“White isn’t a colour that sits well with ninjas,” he reached for the watering can and emptied it over the rest of the budding stems, “nor does it match the colours of our clan, but-”

Janine lunged, throwing her arms around his neck, and he fell back in a way unbefitting a ninja master. The watering can went skittering across the ground and into a bush.

Janine hugged her father as tightly as she could and it was only when his arms, hesitant and awkward, wrap around her waist did she allow herself tears.

\---

_She’s five and watching her father dig holes in his garden._

_The bag of seeds that he brought home this evening is in her lap. Now and again he stops and wipes the sweat from his forehead with a sleeved arm. When he does so for the sixth time (she’s been practising her numbers), she rushes back indoors to fetch a small white towel and he kneels down so she can pat the sweat away for him._

_He smiles that small smile that she knows is only for her, because she never sees him smile at his students, nor at his Pokémon, and he tells her to stay indoors because the day is hot and he doesn’t want her to get her feet dirty with soil._

_She wonders how her feet can even get dirty when she’s wearing slippers._

_She returns to sit on the patio anyway, in the shade, the bag of seeds in her lap and the wings of her father’s Crobat wrapped around her head._

_She swings her legs and continues to cheer her father on._


End file.
